I've known the youth with genius cursed- Soft on his pensive hour I stole, And saw him scan, with anguished soul, His name should have adorned. His fate had been, with anxious mind, He knows his doom- he dies! Palm-tree and laurel rise. PROUT, Notti Romane nel Palazzo Vaticano. We recollect to have been forcibly struck with a practical application of the doctrine to mere commercial enterprise, when we last visited Paris. The 1st of November, being "All Souls'-day," had drawn an immense concourse of melancholy people to the Père la Chaise, ourselves with the rest; on which occasion our eye was arrested, in one of the most sequestered walks of that romantic necropolis, by the faint glimmering of a delicious little lamp, a glow-worm of bronze, keeping its silent and sentimental vigil under a modest urn of black marble, inscribed thus: CI-GIT FOURNIER (Pierre Victor), IL FUT BON PERE, BON FILS, BON EPOUX. SA VEUVE INCONSOLABLE Continue son commerce, Rue aux Ours, No. 19. N.B. ne pas confondre avec la boutique en face s.v.P. R. 1. P. We had been thinking on the previous night of purchasing an article of the kind; so, on our return, we made it a point to pass the rue de l'Ours, and give our custom to the mournful Artemisia. On entering the shop, a jolly, rubicund tradesman courteously accosted us; but we intimated our wish to transact business with "the widow." "La veuve inconsolable ?" 66 Eh, pardieu! c'est moi! je suis, moi, Pierre Fournier, inventeur, &c.: la veuve n'est qu'un symbole, un mythe." We admired his ingenuity, and bought his lamp; by the mild ray of which patent contrivance we have profitably pursued our editorial labours. OLIVER YORKE. Regent Street, Feb. 29, 1836. 66 At Covent Garden a sacred drama, on the story of Jephtha, conveying solemn impressions, is PROHIBITED as a PROFANATION of the period of fasting and mortification ! There is no doubt where the odium should fix— on the Lord Chamberlain or on the BISHOP OF LONDON. Let some intelligent Member of Parliament bring the question before the HOUSE OF COMMONS." Times, Feb. 20 and 21, 1834. THE RELIQUES OF FATHER PROUT. FATHER PROUT'S APOLOGY FOR LENT: HIS DEATH, OBSEQUIES, AND AN ELEGY. "Cependant, suivant la chronique, Le Carême, depuis un mois, Sur tout l'univers Catholique Etendait ses sévères lois."-GRESSET. THERE has been this season in town a sad outcry against Lent. For the first week the metropolis was in a complete uproar at the suppression of the oratorio; and no act of authority since the fatal ordonnances of Charles X. bid fairer to revolutionise a capital than the message sent from Bishop Blomfield to Manager Bunn. That storm has happily blown over. The Cockneys, having fretted their idle hour, and vented their most impotent ire through the safety-valve," the press, have quietly relapsed into 66 their wonted attitude of indifference, and resumed their customary calm. The clamour of the day is now past and gone, and the dramatic "murder of Jephtha" is forgotten. In truth, after all, there was something due to the local reminiscences of the spot; and when the present tenants of the "Garden" recollect that in by-gone days these "deep solitudes and awful cells" were the abode of fasting and austerity, they will not grudge the once-hallowed premises to commemorate in sober stillness the Wednesdays and Fridays of Lent. But let that rest. An infringement on the freedom of theatricals, though in itself a grievance, will not, in all likelihood, be the immediate cause of a convulsion in these realms; and it will probably require some more palpable deprivation to arouse the sleeping energies of John Bull, and to awake his dormant anger. 羹 It was characteristic of the degeneracy of the Romans, that, while they crouched in prostrate servility to each imperial monster that swayed their destinies in succession, they never would allow their amusements to be invaded, nor tolerate a cessation of the sports of the amphitheatre; so that even the despot, while he rivetted their chains, would pause and shudder at the well-known ferocious cry of "Panem et Circenses!" Now, food and the drama stand relatively to each other in very different degrees of importance in England; and while provisions are plentiful, other matters |